How to Use Power Collection in Intel® VTune™ Amplifier for Systems

Intel® System Studio is the name for the Intel’s new embedded software tool suite. This tool suite includes Intel® VTune Amplifier for Systems. This article will explain the steps you need to follow to run the new remote power collectors in VTune Amplifier for Systems on an embedded platform.

Overview

Note: we currently don't support power analysis for Intel® Atom™ processors for Yocto Project*. To use the power analysis feature the current restrictions are:

Intel® Xeon® processors or Intel® Core™ processors based on Intel® microarchitecture code named Nehalem or above

Linux kernel version 2.6.32 or above

The embedded OS we will be focused on is Yocto Project* version 1.2.This platform supports many Intel BSP’s and it also allows you to work without running any physical embedded hardware by letting you develop via an emulator that they provide. Here are the steps we will take to run our collection:

Setting up a Yocto 1.2 environment.

Setting up your Linux host

Setting up a cross compilation environment

Setup a full build of Yocto for your BSP

Building a Yocto kernel

Install System Studio

Cross build the power driver.

Load driver onto your device.

Setup target to not require password. (necessary for the remote collection script)

Run a remote collection using amplxe-runss.py

On your Linux host view the results in the Intel® VTune™ Amplifier for Systems GUI

Note: steps 1,2 and 3 are one time steps. Once you have the power driver built and loaded on your system you should be enabled to collect power data.